Twenty Years at
Baillie Gifford.
One Radical Idea.
James Anderson joined Baillie Gifford in 1983 and managed Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust for over two decades — turning a quiet Edinburgh trust into the definitive public-market proof of power-law investing. Every letter, essay, and interview from Scottish Mortgage to Lingotto, mapped into one knowledge base.
Browse Letters →“The investment industry suffers from accounting envy — a desperate desire to reduce the genuinely uncertain future to numbers. But the greatest returns come from companies whose futures cannot be captured in a spreadsheet.”
James Anderson · Aberration or Premonition?, 2018
Letters
38 essays — Aberration or Premonition?, Scottish Mortgage annual reports, Bloomberg MIB interview, and Lingotto commentaries.
Browse Letters →Concepts
8 ideas — power law returns, imagination in investing, patient capital, benchmark irrelevance, epistemic humility.
Browse Concepts →People
6 figures — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tom Slater, and the founders who define the transformative company.
Browse People →The Anderson Latticework
Ranked by frequency across all letters.
Selected Works
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2000
Managers' Overview & Portfolio Review — Baillie Gifford (year ended 31 March 2000)
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2001
Managers' Overview & Portfolio Review — Baillie Gifford (year ended 31 March 2001)
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2002
Managers' Overview & Portfolio Review — Baillie Gifford (year ended 31 March 2002)
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2003
Managers' Overview & Portfolio Review — Baillie Gifford (year ended 31 March 2003)
Scottish Mortgage Annual Report 2004
Managers' Overview and Managers' Portfolio Review — Baillie Gifford (year ended 31 March 2004)